Central Kansas Library System

A trip to Italy reignites a woman's desires to disastrous effect in this dark ode to womanhood, death, and sex To cool-headed, fastidious Pricilla Messing, Italy will be an escape, a brief glimpse of freedom from a life that's starting to feel like one long decline. Rescued from the bedside of her difficult mother, forty-something Cilla finds herself called away to Rome to keep an eye on her wayward teenage niece, Hannah. But after years of caregiving,...

In the summer of her 28th year, Edna Pontellier and her children, along with the wives and families of other prospective businessmen, spend the summer in an idyllic coastal community away from their husbands and the sweltering heat of 1890s' New Orleans. Aware of deep yearnings that are unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood, Edna plunges into an illicit liaison that reawakens her long dormant desires, inflames her heart, and eventually blinds her...

"Meet the Society of Sirens--three radical, libertine ladies determined to weaponize their scandalous reputations to fight for justice and the love they deserve ... She's a Rakess on a quest for women's rights ... Seraphina Arden's passions include equality, amorous affairs, and wild, wine-soaked nights. To raise funds for her cause, she's set to publish explosive memoirs exposing the powerful man who ruined her. Her ideals are her purpose, her friends...

From bestselling historians Frances and Joseph Gies, authors of the classic "Medieval Life" series, comes this compelling, lucid, and highly readable account of the family unit as it evolved throughout the Medieval period-reissued for the first time in decades. Throughout history, the significance of the family-the basic social unit-has been vital. In Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages, acclaimed historians Frances and Joseph Gies trace the...